The increasing popularity of tortillas and other flatbreads, such as pita and lefsa, is well known. Many ethnic cultures have a distinctive flatbread, and an increasing food trend is for a variety of such flatbreads to be available to the general public instead of being limited to a particular ethnic group. One clear example of this trend is the tortilla, which is enjoyed across virtually the entire population of the United States as well as many other countries.
While flatbreads are available in ethnic restaurants and in some cases grocery stores, many specialized flatbreads are not readily available to the public. Many specialized flatbreads are usually available only at particular seasonal times and in some cases are only made at home using traditional recipes and traditional equipment, if any equipment is in fact used. Many of these flatbread products must in fact be made by hand and are labor-intensive.
Those flatbreads which are widely available, notably corn and flour tortillas and pita, suffer in quality to some extent by mass production and the natural decrease in freshness because of shelf time or the use of preservatives. There is a trade-off between the lower quality and taste of commercially available flatbreads and the inconvenience and time required to make superior flatbreads at home using traditional methods and equipment.
Machines have been designed to make fresh tortillas and, in some cases, other flatbreads, requiring relatively little effort or skill on the part of the user. The quality of flatbreads made by specialty machines is usually quite high. Some of these machines are strictly for commercial use, but others are intended for home use. Among these are the units described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,880,064 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,025.
Although these machines have to an extent been successful in rapidly producing high quality flatbreads, certain improvements are considered to be desirable. One possible area of improvement involves the action and structure for pressing the flatbread from a dough ball into the flattened product. Often, with existing machines, considerable force is necessary to produce the desired flatness of the product, and it is a challenge to design a portable home unit which is convenient for the user to operate, and yet is stable and safe. Generally, the less actual force required of the user on the pressing mechanism the better. The structure of the present invention is designed to provide a desired pressing force to properly flatten the dough ball with a minimum amount of force required of the user.